


Forever Ambiguous

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-28
Updated: 2006-01-28
Packaged: 2019-01-19 11:45:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12409719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: "She died a stranger to me." History is destined to repeat itself.





	Forever Ambiguous

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

**Disclaimer: Everything From HP books belongs to JK Rowling**

****

** Forever Ambiguous **

Sometimes, I wish I knew. Sometimes I wish I knew I would miss a girl long since past whom I never gave any credence to during her life because I would have tried harder to keep her near me. I wish I knew she could be such a presence in my life even when she was never around, even when I hated her very breath. I wish I knew that I would thrive off pictures of a small child and a young woman because maybe yesterday… maybe today… maybe tomorrow I wouldn’t have to think of her and eternally wonder. I wouldn’t have to stare at my face in the mirror and ask the one question that haunts every human that ever lived. _What if?_

There are days when memories of her overwhelm me. They become real, something tangible that I feel as if I could almost reach out and touch her. I’ll close my eyes and hear her voice in my mind yet trick myself into thinking her voice is real. I’ll trick myself into thinking she’s calling me and run down the hall to her bedroom. There I’ll open the door and peek inside only to feel my stomach drop when I see Dudley sleeping in _her_ room and in _her_ bed. I feel my stomach drop each time I realize that she is no longer alive and hasn’t been in many years.

I know I was never an easy person to live with. There is no excuse for my actions towards her all those years ago but that I was young. I was a child playing the arrogant role of an elder sister who never realized what it meant to cherish family. She was my nuisance, the bane of my existence and many days I hated her. There were many days when my cheeks would redden at sight of her scarlet hair and even more days when jealousy bubbled in my stomach because mother swooned over another one of her letters. Days when I was glad she was at school Days when I was glad I didn’t have to look into her perfect face and realize I could not measure up. 

I was five years older than her. It doesn’t seem such a big difference to me anymore but back then it was an eternity. She was so young to me and always followed me around, always wanted to be included when my friends and I would play. She would shyly walk up to me, her hair either down by her waist or in a braid my mother would plait, and she would tug on my arm and whisper to me that she wanted to join. I always turned her away. I never had time for child’s play and that’s all she was to me. She was the young presence living down the hall that I always expected to be there. I always expected her to be tugging on my arm sleeve begging me to play some immature game I never would have considered to take part in.

When she went off to school I was surprised how much I missed her. For so long she was my shadow and my heart would sometimes lurch when I felt lonely. I would sometimes think about her and longingly wish she were home and not at the fascinating school I pretended to despise. I sometimes wished she were older, a person closer to my age whom I could confide in and speak to on the same level of understanding. I remember writing to her once telling her deep secrets and asking rhetorical questions just to see how she answered.

I remember getting her response. Thinking back on it now the letter was mature and deep for a girl aged only eleven. She had elaborate responses and some of her advice was mildly interesting to me at the time but it was so… innocent. I read the letter and my nose scrunched up because she was so naïve to think a simple sorry or talk could make everything okay. It widened the gulf between us making me forget her postscript that told me how happy she was to receive my letter. Her postscript told me how happy she was to be able to help me with life as sisters undoubtedly should. She was merely a child, I thought to myself after that and it was all I could see her as.

She was a child when she came home for every one of her breaks that first year and I shunned her as I always had. I shunned her as I realized how fascinating she was. I shunned as I saw that her childishness was endearing and beautiful in a way mine had never been. I was never a child as she was and never innocent as she was and I hated being enthralled by it as much as I had once felt patronizing because of it. Her life was this big mystery she still lived in awe of when she came home. She had airs of wit I had never before seen underlying in those childish glances she still gave me and the giggle I continued to hear. She was still young, so young and I distained her all the more for that. I distained her for her lack of years that made her so inconsequential to me as her manner allured me all at the same time.

She slowly changed and grew old as I grew old. Slowly the age gap between us diminished and she blossomed into a young teenager. I began to see her not as my little sister but an individual to be reckoned with. She became the person I wished she were years before when she first left for that world I never will understand and I was left unchanged. I was unaltered by time and still the big sister annoyed by the littler one yet I had no shadow any more. No beautiful child begged me to brush her hair and no child asked me random questions about life. She became an entity on her own as I had always been and she stopped begging for my attention. She stopped craving it.

When she was fourteen our fights turned cruel. When she was fourteen we set out to tear each other’s heart out and had fights that left each of us crying in pain because we never could love each other as we wanted to. I thrived off it. I thrived off seeing her beautiful face smeared with tears and the broken look I know was mirrored in my own eyes because belittling her made me feel somehow that I still controlled her as I once had. It made me feel as if I wasn’t sorry at the gulf I put between us and as if I wasn’t upset because of the love she was tired of feeling. I would always walk away with intense satisfaction intermixing with a pain of hurting someone I know deep down I cared for.

Explaining my relationship with my sister would be like explaining where a person goes after they die or what exactly brought human life here to earth. It would be like trying to explain some ancient enigma and I can’t, even now, tell you if I ever loved her. I think back on it and feel pain and affection for the child she was. I feel pain and affection for the fascinating woman she became, but I have always resented her and her death did nothing to mend that. 

I don’t know if I ever loved her because I never before gave myself the chance to discover it. It was nothing, always and forever will be nothing because I cannot go back. I cannot leave my present life and turn around time to allow myself to feel love for her. Her love for me was something. It was present in her childish eyes as she glanced at me. It was present in her letters from school that she wrote to me. It was present in every tear she cried because everything I thought matter too much to her. It was present in her distain for me, the sudden cold aloofness the sprung up when she was fifteen or sixteen. But me, my love was never in my eyes and my affection was always hidden behind a glare and I gave her nothing to reassure her that I did love her. I gave myself nothing either.

I think she grew to hate me. I think by the time she was sixteen or seventeen she saw me for the cold woman I am and stopped dreaming up affections I never did give her. I think she finally realized that the love she had always dreamed of, the relationship she wanted between two blood sisters, would never come to her and she hated me for denying her that. When she was seventeen she decided to give me back what I gave her. She gave me nothing. 

I remember my wedding and how she grudgingly attended as my maid of honor. I remember her growls as she tried on dresses and the sarcasm she gave me and all of my friends. She was insolent, so rude and unreadable and it was the first time I realized that she was no longer so young anymore. She was a woman able to feel pain and hatred as I always have and I saw that fire in her eyes was continually directed and thrown at me. It was on my wedding day that I realized I had shouted too much in the past and gave her too many icy glares cementing her belief that I never loved her. It was on my wedding day when I realized we no longer were sisters. We were no longer two people forever bound by blood and an innate affection instilled at birth. 

We became strangers on that day. Even the house, the world surrounding us that once bound us together faded away as she moved to a place no one, not even our parents, could follow. I was left without a sister, without the innocent presence I was so used to having near and sometimes I wished I was older at the age of twenty three. Sometimes I wish I were wiser back then because now I know what it means to cherish family. I know what it would mean to cherish her and the only thing that taught me that was her death. She died a stranger to me. Not as my sister, not as some distant yet known relative, but a stranger I kept asking myself if I ever really knew.

After she left I moved on rather easily. I didn’t despair and hardly missed her because I became immersed in my life. I had a loving husband who despite his burliness and less than handsome appearance had a kind heart and did treat me with due respect. He was always more than the bigoted business man my parents and Lily always saw and he comforted my life. He still does. I can’t say I love him as one should love their husband but that is the pattern of my life. I never allowed myself to love as a child and even now, even as a woman grown, the feeling is still a foreign concept to me.

It was that exact emotion in her eyes that made me jealous when we were young. It was that fierce love that always shined bright that I could never find in my eyes. My eyes were always cold and hidden. My eyes reflected my very being and I hated knowing that I truly was hard. I hated being unable to feel and hated her for the array of emotions she was always able to muster at the blink of an eye. She was so passionate, so horribly emotional and still I feel jealous because of that. She could love and she could hate and all I ever felt was affection mixed with some innate indifference I’ll live with until I die.

I’m a hollow person. I am only part human since I have no emotion. I didn’t smile on my wedding day. I didn’t smile so that the glow on my face would sparkle in my eyes and my cheeks would be flushed a pretty pink that comes from happiness. I didn’t cry when she died.  I sat at her funeral completely unaware of her coffin in front of me and the tears my parents’ couldn’t stop crying. I was completely oblivious to that fact that she was gone until days later when I found old belongings of hers and it struck me. It struck me how little I smiled at her years and years ago and how little I spoke to her and it hurt me. I felt some mild pain I never before felt at the thought that she was gone. My little sister was dead.

Her death signaled the end to a traumatic relationship between two estranged sisters. She died hating me. She died hating that sister who never included her in life and who never gave her the love she deeply craved. She died hating that sister who would rip her heart out on every school holiday because of the little satisfaction it made her feel. She died and I could feel nothing but sadness because of it. I could feel nothing but sadness because I thought back on our past and realized that it was nothing worth remembering. Thinking of her saddens me because after she died I decided I wanted everything she wanted throughout her life. I wanted a sister and it was denied to me in death as I denied it to her in life.

Harry, I don’t mean to be so cruel to the boy, but he ignites such anger and pain inside of me. He has her eyes. He has the deep green irises that show the emotions I was jealous of years before and has that temper I sometimes wish I had. He _is_ her. He is Lily all over again and many days I hate him because of that. I hate him because he’s fascinating. I hate him because of the glow my cruelty could never stamp out of those wondrous, emerald eyes.

I learned nothing while learning the world. I am ignorant still in the fact that I disregard Harry as a person worthy of being in my life. I shun him as I shunned his mother and history repeats itself, as it always does. I know some day I may regret my treatment of him. I know some day he’ll grow up and I’ll realize I love him as my own son. I’ll realize I love him as I never loved any one before since she is within him and again I’ll lose someone I never noticed until he walks just out of my reach.

I learned everything, as well. I learned that it’s wrong to wait for someone to grow older, to be more mature because all you have is the present. All you have is now because no one can know what the future holds. When she was a child Lily was disinteresting to me. She was a naïve child and of no consequence in my life. I gave her only cold, obligated affection and by the time I wished her to be part of my life she no longer wanted to be. She grew up used to being on her own and resenting me for making it that way. She grew up and no longer cared to have the affections I was ready to bestow on her. I was too late. I realize that now.

Do I mourn the relationship we could have had? Yes, I do. I mourn Lily not for her death but for the life I never allowed myself to take part in. I mourn the loss of a friend I never had and the past that could have turned out so differently. I mourn my absence at her and James’ wedding as well as her insolence when attending mine. I mourn the happiness I feigned at her birth and the wretched tears I could never cry at her death because my sister was a wonderful woman.

Do I love her? That is a question I am not sure I can ever answer for you. She was my sister, my enemy, and now she is my pain at a life missed. Throughout my adolescence I felt nothing for her. Throughout my young adulthood she was a dull pain I never thought of. Throughout the present she is a mere memory kept alive by my every thought. Do I love her? My feelings for Lily Evans will always be a blind spot for me, _forever ambiguous_. 


End file.
